At ten that night, an hour out of Bellhaven, Ada Vale looked up from the overnight log when the bridge door opened. Leonie Marr stood there.
Ada had known she was aboard. The passenger list had carried Leonie's name and a Westhaven destination, and Ada had looked at it longer than she needed to. Now her former first officer had a wet cuff where she'd rested her hand against the outside rail. Years had passed since they'd spoken face to face. Leonie still waited to be invited across the threshold of a working bridge, though she had once crossed it without looking up.
“I need a word,” Leonie said. “About a passenger.”
Ada glanced at Ellis, who had the watch. The coast showed as a dark edge beyond the bridge glass. A line of instrument light crossed his hands. “I'll be in the small crew room,” she told him. “Call me for the approach update.”
She led Leonie through the side door. The room held two chairs, a table, and a sink that rattled if the ferry met a short swell. Ada closed the door, not quite all the way. She wanted Ellis able to reach her, and she did not want their voices carrying into the passage.
“Tell me who,” she said.
“Nia Rowe. She's twenty-four. Her father is on board with her. Cal Rowe. At Moss Point he intends to take her off the ship whether she agrees or not.”
The intermediate port was due around three in the morning. Five hours could be long, if somebody used them to prepare; it could be short, if Ada treated the warning as a quarrel between relatives. “What did he do?”
“I heard him tell her he'd take her bag to the car and she could stop arguing about the rest. She said she wasn't getting off. He said they'd settle it at the gangway.”
“Where were you?”
“Passenger lounge, just inside the window seats. They weren't alone. He kept his voice down.”
“Did he touch her?”
“Not then. I didn't see him touch her.”
Ada waited. Leonie had never been slow to give a detail that helped someone else act. Tonight she kept one hand folded over the other and looked at the empty chair rather than at Ada.
“She came to you?” Ada asked.
“Before we sailed. She told me she wasn't leaving at Moss Point. I came to you after I heard him.”
“Did she ask you to come?”
“No.” Leonie touched the wet cuff of her sleeve. “She asked me to stay near her. I came up while she thought I was getting water.”
Ada kept her hand on the pen. “Before I send for her, tell her you came. She should hear it from you.”
“If I tell her now, she may refuse to come,” Leonie said.
“Then she refuses. I still have to ask.”
“I'll tell Nia what I said,” Leonie replied. “I won't tell her the captain has made a decision you haven't made.”
“Good.” Ada wrote that Nia had not asked Leonie to report the exchange. It would matter when Nia tried to understand who had chosen the next conversation.
Ada pulled the chair out and sat, so Leonie could take the other without feeling held there. “Is she traveling to Westhaven?”
“Yes.”
“I can speak to her. I can separate them for now and talk to shore staff before the stop. I can consider ending their involvement in the crossing at Moss Point if the facts call for it.”
“That puts her where his family is waiting.”
“The ship is calling there in any case. I said I'd consider what to do with the passengers.”
“Cal's family is there. He knows people who can be waiting when the ramp comes down.”
“Do you know that anyone is waiting?”
“No.” Leonie breathed out. “I know what he wants.”
Ada wrote down Cal's words as Leonie had given them, then asked her to repeat the last part. Leonie did, including Nia's refusal. There were things a captain could do with an exact account. There was much less she could do with the look on an old friend's face.
“I won't make her leave with him,” Ada said. “I also won't assume she wants to stay aboard because you tell me she does.”
“Ask her. She'll tell you.”
“Then why come to me instead of letting her?”
The question landed harder than Ada meant. Leonie looked at the door. “Because he gave her a deadline in a place where she has to pass him to leave. She didn't ask me to make the ship safe. I heard him and came.”
Ada knew the difference. Leonie had taken a risk with Nia's confidence by speaking, and Ada could not return the warning to her simply because she disliked the way it arrived. “What else do I need to know about why she's going to Westhaven?”
Leonie's hand tightened around the edge of her sleeve. “It isn't mine to tell you all of it.”
“What part is yours?”
“I know the person Cal doesn't want her to see.”
“Does that person know Nia is coming?” Ada asked.
Leonie took a moment too long. “There has been contact.”
“Through you?”
“Through someone I know.”
“And you believe Cal knows about it?”
“Nia said he knows there's a plan.”
Ada tapped the pen once against the table. “Will someone meet her at Westhaven? I don't need an address.”
“Nia wants to tell you that herself.”
“Then give her the chance soon.”
Leonie drew her folded hands apart. “You used to trust me to decide which detail could wait.”
“When we were working the same watch, I could ask you afterward. You came as a passenger tonight with another passenger's confidence. I will hear her.”
The guarded answer about Westhaven brought Ada back to the last time Leonie had protected a Rowe passenger. Miriam Rowe. Leonie did not say the name, but the route and the old injury made it plain. Eight years ago Miriam had boarded alone while Ada was captain and Leonie her first officer. At the scheduled Moss Point stop, after hearing why Miriam did not want Cal told where she went, Ada had let her leave. Leonie arranged for Inez, Miriam's friend, to meet her. Days later Cal came to the Bellhaven terminal demanding an account. Ada and Leonie signed a written answer on the company's stationery saying Miriam had continued to Westhaven. Ada knew when she signed that it was false. They had not changed a booking or a manifest; they had given a man the wrong destination because they feared he would pursue her. Ada had wanted the exception to end there. Leonie had kept a contact channel, and the quarrel over that choice had ended their friendship.
Now the same two ports were ahead of them, and a second Rowe was aboard.
“Does Nia know what we told Cal then?” Ada asked.
“Not from me.”
“Has she read his copy?”
“She found my name on his copy. I don't know when he first showed it to her, or what he told her it proved.”
Ada set down the pen. Leonie had given enough for the present warning to matter, and she was withholding something about the destination that might matter just as much. Ada could feel their old roles trying to return: Leonie close to the person in trouble, Ada asked to make a decision on a partial account. It was tempting to refuse that arrangement outright. It was also a poor reason to wait while Cal prepared for Moss Point.
“I will document what you heard,” she said. “I'll arrange a private conversation with Nia and speak to the appropriate people ashore. Until I know more, I want the two of them given space from each other. Can you tell me where she is?”
“In the lounge. I asked her to stay by the window seats.”
“Did she agree?”
“She said she'd be there for a while.”
Ada wrote down the window seats.
Leonie rose. “If you tell Cal I came to you—”
“I won't turn your name into a public announcement. He may work it out. I can't promise him ignorance.”
“I didn't ask you to.”
For a moment Ada saw the officer Leonie had been, reading the boundary quickly. Then Leonie reached for the door and the years between them came back.
“Leonie,” Ada said. “You signed that answer with me. I remember.”
Leonie turned. “So do I.”
Ada opened the door for Leonie and went back to Ellis. She gave him the names and asked for a discreet crew contact. He asked whether the route was changing.
“Not yet,” Ada said. She looked at the dark water ahead. “First I hear from the woman whose name is on the ticket.”